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scribed by Moses. Their legend states that Jupiter, designing to destroy the brazen race of men on account of their wickedness, poured rain from heaven; that Deucalion and his wife, Pyrrha, were preserved in an ark, which floated until the waters had subsided, and then landed them upon Mt. Parnassus; that there they offered sacrifices unto their gods, and that from

them descended the inhabitants of the renewed earth.

Pausanias, a celebrated geographical writer, relates that the ancient Athenians believed that the flood retired from the land through a cavity in their district, over which their ancestors had erected a sacred

building. They made this event the subject of an annual ceremony; throwing every year into the fissure through which they supposed the waters to have departed, a large cake composed of honey and wheat.

According to Lucian, there was also at Hierapolis, a city of Syria, a sacred temple erected in commemoration of the same event. The Syrians claimed that it was through a chasm in the earth under their temple that the waters of the Deluge departed, and that the foundation of their sacred edifice was laid by Deucalion himself, immediately after he came forth from the ark.

The opinion of the ancient Romans on this subject may be gathered very explicitly from the poetry of Ovid. It is almost impossible to read his account of the Deluge without being impressed with the belief that by some means or other he had access to the description given by Moses. I shall be pardoned for giving here a brief extract from this writer, in the beautiful translation of Dryden, as it illustrates the truth of this remark. This, be it remembered, is the language of a heathen an idolater who never heard of Moses, and knew nothing of the God we worship. After stating that, owing to the wickedness of men, Jupiter had determined to destroy by a flood the human race, with the exception of two persons, he proceeds with his description of the dire catastrophe:

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"Th' expanded waters gather on the plain : They float the fields and overtop the grain: Then rushing onward with impetuous sway, Bear flocks, and folds, and laboring hinds away. Nor safe their dwellings were, for, sapp'd by floods,

Their houses fell upon their household gods.

Now seas and earth were in confusion lost:
A world of waters, and without a coast.
The frighted wolf now swims among the sheep;
The yellow lion wanders in the deep;
The fowls, long beating on their wings in vain,
Despair of land, and drop into the main.
Now hills and vales no more distinction know,
And level'd nature lies oppress'd below."

After proceeding at some length with this description, he goes on to observe that the Deity,

"Surveying earth from high, Beheld it in a lake of water lie,

That where so many millions lately lived
But two, the best of either sex, surviv'd;
He loosed the Northern wind; fierce Boress
flies

Serenely while he blows, the vapors driven
To puff away the clouds and purge the skies.
Discover heaven to earth and earth to heaven.
At length the world was all restored to view;
But desolate, and of a sickly hue:
Nature beheld herself, and stood aghast,
A dismal desert and a howling waste."

If we turn our attention from ancient to modern times we discover, even among the least enlightened nations, distinct traditions of the reality of the Deluge. These traditions are, as might be expected, mixed up with fantastic absurdities just in proportion to their lack of intellectual cultivation and to the extravagance of their popular superstition.

One of the earliest European visitors to the island of Tahiti relates that, in answer to a question relative to their origin, one of the natives said that a long time ago their god, being angry, dragged the earth through the sea, when their island, was broken off and preserved. The literature of the Chinese, says Sharon Turner, has several notices of this awful catastrophe. The history of China by Confucius opens with a representation of their country being still under the effect of the waters; and among the traditions current among them are the confounding of day and night which they say then took place; that Min-hoa, evidently a corruption of Noah, was preserved in a boat, and that the remainder of the human race were converted into fishes.

Mr. Medhurst, in his "State and Prospects of China," alludes also to the same fact, and specifies several circumstances in connection with their account of the flood, which led him to the belief that, in their allusions to this period, the Chinese are merely giving their version of the events that occurred from Abraham to

Noah. Their tradition, among other things, says that at this period, soon after the Deluge, wine was discovered. The Bible tells us that after the subsiding of the waters Noah began to be a husband- | man, and he planted a vineyard; and the probability is that, bad as were the antediluvians, and we have seen that they were desperately wicked, they were strangers to the use of intoxicating drinks.

Scarcely less remarkable is the tradition among the Hindoos. It is found embodied in an ancient poem of which Sir William Jones gives the following abridgment: Their prince was, on one occasion, performing his ablutions in the river Critimala when the Hindoo god, Vishna, appeared to him in the shape of a small fish, and, after several augmentations of bulk in different waters, thus addressed his amazed votary: In seven days all creatures who have offended me shall be destroyed by a deluge, but thou shalt be secured in a capacious vessel miraculously formed. Take, therefore, all kinds of medicinal herbs, and esculent grain for food, and, together with the seven holy men, your respective wives, and pairs of all animals, enter the ark without fear. Saying this he disappeared, and after seven days the ocean began to overflow the land, and the earth to be flooded with constant showers, when the prince saw a large vessel floating upon the waters. He entered it, having in all respects conformed to the instructions of Vishna, who, in the form of a vast fish, suffered the vessel to be tied with a great sea serpent, as with a cable, to his measureless horn.

Even in the interior of Africa the history of a deluge is mentioned in their traditions, in which all human beings perished; but they add that the Deity was obliged, afterward, to create mankind anew.

But it is in our own country, among the aboriginal inhabitants of North and South America, that are found the most striking evidences of the truth of the Mosaic history, in the traditions current among them. For ages prior to the time when Columbus revealed the new world to the old one, this continent had been inhabited by a variety of populations in different states of eivilized and savage life, unknown to the rest of mankind, and maintaining no kind of intercourse with them. The general prevalence of a belief in a general deluge among a people thus situated, is strong

evidence of its actual occurrence, and of the fact that all nations have descended from one and the same origin. It is stated by Molini, in his history of Chili, that the Araucànians, the ancient inhabitants of that country, have a tradition of a great deluge from which only a few persons were saved, who took refuge upon a high mountain, called the Thundering, which had three points, and the property of moving upon water.

The Peruvians had a tradition that a great deluge occurred long before there were any Incas or kings among them, and when the world was very populous; that only six persons were saved by means of a raft, and that from those six the earth was repeopled. The Brazilians not only preserved the tradition of a deluge, but believe that the entire human race perished in it, with the exception of two brothers with their wives, who saved themselves by climbing the highest trees on the loftiest mountains. It is said, too, that they annually celebrate the memory of this event by religious ceremonies.

Acosta, in his history, says the Mexicans speak of a great flood in their country, by which all men were drowned; and in their peculiar paintings, which constituted their literature, there was found an expressive representation of that event. In short, wherever the untiring enterprise of man has penetrated, with scarcely a solitary exception, there is found existing, in some form or other, the memorials of a watery deluge. The justly celebrated Humboldt, with great force and propriety, remarks that similar traditions exist among all the nations of the earth, and, like the relics of a vast shipwreck, are highly interesting in the philosophical study of our species. These traditions, he adds, respecting the primitive state of the globe among all nations, coming to us in so many different languages, belonging to branches which appear to have no connection with each other, fill us with astonishment. Were the Mosaic record a fable, an invention of the imagination, this would, indeed, be matter of astonishment; but to us, it is what might be expected; it is the spontaneous and overwhelming corroboration of the account given of an actual occurrence by the faithful pencil of inspiration. Turn we, then, our attention for a little while to the Scriptural narrative of this great catastrophe.

The wickedness of the human race having increased to such an extent that God determined to visit them with swift destruction, he communicated his purpose to Noah; with thee, says the Almighty, I will establish my covenant. By special directions from heaven an ark is built; its size, and shape, and doors, and windows, are planned by infinite wisdom; Noah the builder, God himself the architect.

It has been strangely supposed by some, that Noah was occupied in building the ark for the long period of one hundred and twenty years. There is no warrant for the supposition. It has arisen from the declaration of the Almighty when he said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years; by which he intimates that he will yet in his long-suffering bear with him for that space, if perchance he will improve it, and repent that he may find mercy. How long a time Noah was occupied, or what assistance he had in building it, is of little moment. It appeared, doubtless, to those who gazed upon it in its progress, much as many esteem the efforts of Christians nowadays for their own salvation and that of their friends; a work unnecessary, if not absurd and foolish.

The immense building being finished, the animal and the feathered tribes, probably by a special instinct, are seen flocking together, of the clean by pairs, of the unclean by sevens; they enter the ark, where suitable provision had been already stored; and at length, every necessary preparation being made, the day of vengeance dawns upon the world. It found the human family still heedless; they were marrying and giving in marriage; some absorbed in schemes of pleasure, others grasping after wealth all alike indifferent to the threatenings of Jehovah; all alike regardless of Noah's warning voice. It was on the seventeenth day of the second month, answering to the seventh of December, in the six hundredth year of Noah's age, and in the year from the creation, one thousand six hundred and fifty-six, that God gives the command to Noah to enter into the ark with his wife, and his sons, and his sons' wives with him. The command did I say? I am mistaken. The language of the Almighty is rather that of kind and personal invitation: it is not go, but come! Come thou and all thy house into the ark; implying evidently that He, with whom

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Noah had walked for so many years, would still be with him, in what otherwise would have been a dreary solitude. And the Lord, says the sacred writer, the Lord shut him in, and by the same act, of course, shut the others out. O, what an hour was that! the door was shut! an event probably in the mind of the Saviour when, urging men to strive to enter in at the strait gate, he adds: When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us, he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not.

And now the sky is gathering blackness, the vivid lightnings and pealing thunder proclaim, in terrible language, God's day of vengeance! All nature shudders at the frown of his anger. The rain descends faster, and with still increasing violence, for now, in the language of the sacred writer, the windows of heaven are opened. The waters, which he tells us were above the firmament and separated from those below on the second day of the creation, now descend in violent masses upon the doomed earth. To mingle with them, the fountains of the great deep are broken up; rivers and seas overflow their banks, and rush together. In wild confusion, the startled inhabitants run to and fro: multitudes perish ere they can escape from the valleys and the plains; but there is yet safety in the high hills: the lofty mountains will afford security: thither in wild despair they fly. A week elapses, a second, and a third pass, and still the waters increase: gnawing hunger now heightens the agony of those who still survive, and with cannibal ferocity the strong destroy the weak. But the foaming waters still gain upon them; they prolong their misery a little while by climbing the highest trees; to them they cling with frantic despair; they hear the unavailing shrieks of relatives and friends, as one by one they drop into the flood; many behold, too, at a distance, that only place of safety which, when building, they ridiculed, which, when they might, they refused to enter. Like him, of whom the Saviour spake, when, in hell, he saw Lazarus afar off, with an impassable gulf between them, they see the ark floating serenely upon the billows; its precious inmates safe, and God himself the pilot. But the storm is still increasing the waters continue to

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rise, and now the last strong man (he has been clinging to the branches of the loftiest cedar with the energy of desperation) becomes faint;

"No sound is heard, except the bubbling cry Of that strong swimmer in his agony;"

a chilling numbness seizes him; he falls into the foaming flood, and the hoarse winds chant a melancholy requiem, which, mingled with his last shriek, proclaims

that all is over: the earth one vast ocean, that ocean the grave of all who rejected the proffered mercy of Jehovah.

UNREASONABLE JEALOUSY.

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A LESSON FOR YOUNG WIVES.

is a prevailing fault of young wives to take a dislike to the male friends of their husbands. It is not exactly jealousy, but something very like it, and "the Anglo Saxon" tells an admirable story illustrating its folly and inculcating a good moral. Frederic Wilmer had been married about three months. His wife, Marion, loved him as a wife ought to love her husband, and was happy, but in her cup of bliss there was one bitter drop. Her husband had a friend, one Charlie Stevens, to whom the pretty Marion thought he paid too much attention. She determined to have that friendship ruptured, that, as she was her husband's best, so she should be his only friend. The young couple gave a large party, and when the guests were all gone, "Well, haven't we had a good time, Fred?" said the young wife, as she threw herself down by the side of her husband, and surveyed, with real pleasure, the disordered parlor, and the tables confusedly scattered over with heaps of china, and glass, and silver, intermixed with broken pieces of cake, and fruit, and cream.

"Yes, a most delectable one; and do you know what I thought when you stood at the table, Marion ?"

Looking down, and smiling with the dark blue eyes in her face, she replied: "No; something I shall like to hear." "That, though there were a great many lovely women around me, none, after all, could compare with a certain Marion Wilmer."

"O, Fred! did you think that?" And she looked doubly beautiful now, with the smile coming up into her blue eyes, and the blush into her fair cheeks.

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Now, don't look so cross, Fred," pleaded the wife, laying her hand on her husband's shoulder.

"Marion, I would not have had you done this thing for a thousand parties," he said, sternly. "Charlie Stevens is a true friend to me, and would go farther to serve me than all the people together who were here to-night."

This praise was not pleasant to the young wife. A little frown gathered over her face.

"I think you set quite too much store by this friend of yours," she said. "I can't, for my part, see in what his great merit or attractions consist."

"In his noble soul and in his warm heart, Marion. I must call upon him to-morrow, and make up this matter, somehow. It will be a disagreeable business, though." Marion burst into tears.

"And make your wife ridiculous by throwing the blame on her. I would not have believed you could do this, Fred, even for Charles Stevens's sake!"

Her tears softened the young husband at once, and he was ready to promise almost anything to call back the old smiles to that bright face; then he saw clearly that he could not apologize to his friend without implicating Marion, and he finally

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Frederic Wilmer and Charles Stevens did not meet for several days after this; and when the former called to invite his friend to dine with him, he felt at once that he was no longer the Charles Stevens of the old time. He talked and joked after the old fashion, and said the old words, but his manner, and even his very smile, had lost their old heartiness; and Frederic felt it all.

Men have not the tact of women, in making graceful apologies, or getting out of an awkward dilemma. The young merchant had it several times at "his tongue's end" to allude to the party, and apologize in some way for the inadvertency on his part. But he could not implicate Marion, and he was too conscientious to tell a falsehood. So they parted, and Charles Stevens did not come to dinner, because an imperative engagement prevented; and after this Marion had Frederic all the evening to herself.

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"I'm very sorry you can't go, Marion; but I'll run down and tell them not to wait for me, as I shan't leave you alone."

"Yes, you will, Fred," answered Marion, lifting her head from the pillow, and faintly smiling. "I shall sleep until your return; so your being here will do me no good. Kiss me now, and run off."

Mr. and Mrs. Wilmer had ridden down with a large party to the shore that day; but she had been taken ill with a severe headache, to which she was subject, and obliged to keep her chamber in the hotel, while the rest of the party were preparing to go off on a sailing excursion.

"Well, then, if you insist upon my going, good-by," and Wilmer laid back the uplifted hand very tenderly on the pillow, and left his wife to that best physician of head and heart aches-sleep.

he found a large addition had just been made to the party, and among them was his old friend, Charles Stevens. They met cordially, of course, with mutual expressions of surprise and pleasure, which were interrupted by the hurried preparations to embark.

The sailing-boat was not large, and, when all the ladies were seated, the boatmen thought it unsafe to put off with so large a company. On this account, a number of the gentlemen volunteered to take a small boat that lay on the shore near them, and among these were Charles Stevens and Frederic Wilmer.

It was a beautiful day when the two boats swept from the shore, the one riding the waves with her white sails leaping to the wind, and her green sides breasting the blue waters, as if she knew and rejoiced in the proud manhood and womanly loveliness which she carried.

The small boat was quite filled by the six gentlemen on board of her, who, waving their hats to the ladies, plied their oars right bravely, as they followed in the wake of the larger boat.

Again the heavens grew black with great masses of cloud. The wind freshened. The two boats had separated long before this; but now both were turned homeward. Fiercer and fiercer stormed the wind, madly hurling up the waves; and the boats, now far apart, rocked and quivered as they plowed through the white foam.

Frederic Wilmer and Charles Stevens were the only two on board the smaller boat who understood perfectly how to manage her, and she was by no means well constructed to ride against the wind. Two of the gentlemen, thoughtlessy standing up in it, grew dizzy, lost their equilibrium, and, in attempting to regain it, fell to one side, nearly capsizing the boat. In Fred's alarm, the oar fell from his hand into the sea. He leaned over, making a quick, blind motion to secure it; the boat dipped again, and when she righted a second time, Frederic Wilmer was in the sea.

He was not an expert swimmer, and, after battling for a moment with those wild waves, he went down, and there was none to save him.

The men in the boat sat horror bound. None of them, except Charles Stevens,

When the young man reached the shore, could swim well, and the shore was at a

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